Patrick Spring
Character "Never enough time. Never enough time..." Patrick Spring, played by Julian McMahon, is a reclusive billionaire and the subject of Dirk's investigation. He is murdered at the very start of the series, but hired Dirk to investigate the murder before it took place. It is later revealed that his real name is Zackariah Webb, and he is an inventor from the 1800s who invented a time machine. The machine fell into the hands of a group of hippies who used it as the basis of a religion, and in his attempts to recover it and mitigate the damage Zackariah took on two new aliases- Edgar Spring and his son, Patrick- and met Lydia's mother in the future. He is ultimately responsible for his own death in the present. History In the 1800s, inventor Zackariah Webb attempted to invent a time machine. Initially his attempts were flawed, separating souls of his animal test subjects from their bodies and transporting them alone in the form of electric ghosts. Eventually he created a model that worked, but it went into the future without him, re-appearing seconds later altered and with a bloody note from Dirk Gently attached. Realising something had gone wrong, Zackariah travelled into the future hoping to rectify the situation. The machine took him to 1968, where the long-abandoned mansion had been occupied by a small collective of hippies. They were in possession of the original machine that travelled forward and refused to give it back, believing it to have come to them from the stars. Outnumbered and unable to recover the machine, Zackariah retreated. He took on the name Edgar Spring, converted his time machine into an unlimited energy device, and using the money moved into the Ridgeley building and began what was to be a decades-long war with the hippies, who had renamed themselves the Men of the Machine. Having discovered the original soul-separating flaw in the time machine, they started using it to swap their souls into new bodies so they could remain young and strong and take on rich and influential personas. Decades passed, with Edgar fighting the Men of the Machine and intermittently time-hopping. He took on the name Patrick Spring, son of Edgar, and continued his 'father's' legacy. But one day, after being gravely injured by the cultists, he met Catherine. The two fell in love, and Catherine gave birth to Lydia Spring. In 2001, Catherine was murdered by the Men of the Machine. Grief-stricken, Patrick armed himself and took one last hop into the future, to 2017, to kill the leader of the cult and end the war once and for all. Unfortunately while there he met Dirk Gently, who divulged that his future self was about to meet the Men of the Machine to make a deal for Lydia. Enraged that his future self would make a deal with the men who killed his wife, Patrick went to the Perryman Grand to threaten him, and ended up triggering the weaponised soul explosion that killed him at the start of the series. After this, he travelled back in time once again, for the final time, back to 2001. He spent the next fifteen years preparing for the moment in the hotel- laying the death maze and maps for Dirk and Todd, burying the pieces of his time machine for them to find and reassemble, putting all his plans in place for his inevitable death. Category:Characters